Among the Reformed, the only person I have yet found to affirm spiritual matter in angels is Samuel Willard. This position pretty much died out after Scotus (the reason for this being that the Franciscans felt no need to defend it after Scotus proposed haecceity as the principle of individuation). So I, being somewhat inclined to affirm it (Scotus rejects it as he sees it unnecessary due to his own metaphysics. However, I don’t want to claim his system of metaphysics at the moment, as there are certain aspects I’m simply indifferent on. If I were to reject certain aspects, then it might be better to affirm spiritual matter. Thus the argument for me is focused on showing Thomas’s own assumptions not to allow his position rather than focusing on whether there is spiritual matter as such), basically just agree to forgive the Reformed every time I read them deny matter to angels, as pretty much nobody affirmed it at their time. Willard, however, is far too based for that. Here are his comments:
They are spiritual natures or substances. They are natures, that is, they have both matter and form; form they have, because they are essentially distinguished each from other: Gabriel is not another angel. And to think them immaterial is absurd; for what serves the form for? Besides they have a common kind, Heb. 2:16, . . . the nature of angels . . . , which community flows from hence. They are capable of torment; they are not a mere act, as God is, but have a protention; they are quantity, and not infinite; though they can contract and dilate themselves, yet they are limited to place, and have local motion, which is not instantaneous, but successive, Dan. 9:21. But they are spiritual, and therefore incorporeal; they have the finest matter; our senses cannot perceive them; Luke 24:39, . . . a spirit hath not flesh and bones . . . If ever they become visible, it is by assuming a body, for the time, without any personal union. And being spirits, they are persons, inasmuch as they are individual substances of a rational nature, or causes by counsel, subsisting of themselves, and hence are capable of happiness or misery.
Some of the arguments Willard uses here (that they have successive local motion, that they share a common nature) are affirmed by the likes of Turretin and Van Mastricht in their sections on angels even though both say that angels are immaterial. How this can possibly be, I have no idea.
